"I want to avoid violence non-violence is the first article of my faith" -- Mahatma Gandhi, 1922
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| Mahatama Gandhi with his Charkha |
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Mahatma Ghandi's political philosophy on non-violence is shattered by the recent Indian and Pakistani nuclear tests -- how much of his historic influence remains on the sub-continent?
On January 30, 1948, a few months after the independence of India in which he had played the chief role, Mohandas Gandhi walked to his evening prayers in Delhi. A young man named Nathuram Godse pushed his way through the crowd around Gandhi and crouched to kiss his feet. As Godse was pulled away by guards, he drew a gun and shot Gandhi three times. Gandhi fell dying, his final words, "Hai Rama!" -- "O God!"
So died a great Asian, also known in India and around the world by the title "Mahatma", a Hindi word meaning "of great soul" or "revered one".
Lord Mountbatten, the last British Viceroy of India, said Gandhi would go down in history as "on par with Buddha and Jesus Christ", and Albert Einstein, philosopher and Nobel Prize science winner, said "Generations to come will scarcely believe that such a one as this ever in flesh and blood walked upon this earth." Fifty years after Gandhi's death the nation he created is the world's largest democracy, with the secret ballot, a free press and an independent judiciary.
Karamchand Mohandas Gandhi was born on October 2, 1869, the third son and the last of four children of well-to-do Hindu parents, at Porbandor on the north-west coast of India. His family was of the Bania sub-caste, traditionally working merchants and traders. When Gandhi was born, India was the "jewel in the crown" of the British Empire. Around 60,000 British troops, supported by 200,000 locally enlisted soldiers, called sepoys, maintained British power. The country, then with a population of 350 million, second only to China, was administered by only 2000 or so British civil servants, career administrators who often spent their working lives in India, as their parents had before. The cultures of India date back 3000 years and the country was divided by scores of languages, religions and castes. When the American writer Mark Twain visited India a century ago he called it "the country of a hundred nations and a hundred tongues, of a thousand religions and two million gods".
Gandhi grew up in a traditional Hindu family. His mother Putili Ba strongly influenced his moral, social and religious beliefs.
In 1894, Gandhi opposed legislation in British-ruled Natal which was intended to deprive Indians there of the right to vote for the National Assembly. He formed a committee, wrote to newspapers and petitioned officials. Gandhi collected 10,000 signatures against the legislation but had only a moral victory. The Assembly passed a law without mentioning Indians directly, but achieving the same discrimination.
The treatment of indentured Indian labourers was another Gandhi target. He petitioned government and wrote newspaper articles about their plight. When they had finished work contracts the labourers had to choose between returning to India, beginning a new indentured contract, or buying freedom at a cost equivalent to a year's pay. After many Gandhi petitions and articles, the British Viceroy of India complained to London about the treatment of his Indian subjects in South Africa. As a result the annual "tax" was reduced to about one month's pay, an improvement which proved Gandhi's actions and arguments had some effect in London, as well as in South Africa and India.
Although the Indian civil rights struggle progressed, the white community's racist treatment of Indians did not change.
Gandhi's next political target was a Transvaal law compelling Indians to register and be fingerprinted. About 3000 Indians held a protest meeting at which a Muslim merchant vowed to defy the law. Gandhi warned that this would risk jail and fines, but the entire audience vowed to resist. As a result only a few hundred of the 13,000 Indian community registered. Gandhi and his supporters were sentenced to two months in prison.
Gandhi blamed the violence on himself and fasted for three days, the first of his many political fasts. He decided that his non-violent strategies were unworkable until all Indians understood them. He set about teaching, with the Indian National Congress as his platform.
Most Congress members were well-to-do English speakers who wore European clothes and had been educated overseas. Their endless talk seemed to lead to little action, so Gandhi began changing Congress style and members. He symbolically rejected British rule by swapping his English suits for the dhoti, the traditional loincloth of the Indian labourer, and reverting to his native language, Gujarati. To spread his strategy of non-cooperation with British rule, Gandhi founded the National Volunteer Corps. Among those who joined was Jawaharlal Nehru, son of the president of the Congress and later the first Prime Minister of India. Nehru followed Gandhi's pilgrimage across India as he took his ideas to the millions. Everywhere they went volunteers taught villagers how to spin and weave their raw cotton into cloth. This symbolic action became a vivid image of Indian nationalism and the Gandhian politics of nonviolence. The spinning wheel is the central symbol of the national flag of modern India.
On April 6, 1930, the marchers reached the Arabian Sea, performed a purification ritual, gathered some salt and thereby broke the law. Thousands of Indians soon followed his lead and gathered sea salt. They also boycotted shops stocking British goods.
The colonial Government waited for the political heat and dust to recede but it persisted. Gandhi and Nehru were imprisoned. Some 2500 Gandhi volunteers gathered to raid a saltworks. Hundreds of Indian police, under British officers, clubbed them as they advanced but none resisted. The news of violence met by nonviolence spread around the world. Gandhi began to be a global name.
A few months later the British offered to talk with Gandhi about constitutional reform. He first insisted on repeal of the salt laws. Gandhi called off the campaign of civil disobedience and went to London to listen to the British. It was another symbolic victory -- the humble law student returned as a national leader and international figure. The talks led to nothing acceptable to Gandhi. He wrote to the Viceroy: "On bended knee I asked for bread, and you gave me stone instead."
Gandhi resumed his campaigns, was sent back to jail and Congress was outlawed. However, real reforms did finally begin four years later. Britain passed the historic Government of India Act, which allowed large areas to govern themselves with a degree of local independence.
Real power still remained under British control in Delhi, but Congress took the limited opportunity and won seats in the self-governing provinces. Ominously, the Muslim League won only five per cent of the Muslim vote and its leader, Mohamed Ali Jinnah, predicted a "Hindu" dictatorship over Muslims.
In February, 1947, Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten, a relative of the British royal family, was appointed the last Viceroy of India. He was glamourous but incompetent. The timing of many of his actions remains controversial. In essence, his critics say he moved too fast for safety.
Muslim leaders insisted that an independent Muslim state be created. The Congress Party conceded the territories Muslims wanted -- north-west and north-east India became Pakistan, a nation physically divided by 1500 kilometres of India. Independence for both nations came at midnight on August 14, 1947.
The achievement of independence created far more violence than the struggle for it. In the partition, Hindus fled Pakistan and Muslims fled India. About one million people died in the greatest mass movement in modern history as seven million people left their old homes for new nations. Gandhi saw his life of nonviolence culminating in mass violence. He could only react with fasting. In his last days, despair often exceeded elation.
India was independent but endangered. Between fasts, and between Hindu-Muslim truces, Gandhi visited the scenes of riot destruction, met refugees, talked with Nehru and grew weaker and sadder. He was 78. An extremist Hindu conspiracy to kill him was discovered and Gandhi declared, "If I die by the bullet of a mad man I must do so smiling. Should such a thing happen to me, you are not to shed one tear." Ten days later he was assassinated by a Hindu fanatic opposed to partition and millions wept.
Half a century on, India's independence and democracy are Gandhi's monuments. Although modern India -- where the computer is almost as common as the spinning wheel -- is not in his home-spun image, it is the world's largest democracy -- an achievement for which his lifelong sacrifice for freedom laid the foundations.
Note: Few informations are taken by the article written by Rebecca Leathem.
